24 hours on the campaign trail with the real protest candidate of 2016

BRIGHAM CITY, Utah - It's Friday night in Utah, and more than 100 people have crowded into a room at a community center about an hour from Salt Lake City.

Teenagers, children, parents, and grandparents have all come out to hear Evan McMullin make his case, just days before Election Day, for why Utah voters should shun the two major-party candidates and cast a ballot for him.

The independent presidential candidate from Provo, Utah, joined the race just three months ago as a way to protest Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump.

His campaign got off to a slow start, but then the Access Hollywood tape leaked. Trump was heard on the 2005 recording making lewd comments about women and bragging about how his celebrity status allowed him to grope them.

A significant proportion of the voters in Utah, a conservative, religious red state, then fled from the Trump camp and threw their support behind McMullin, a Mormon with little name recognition but a sterling conservative resume.

McMullin soon climbed to a respectable standing in Utah, with one poll in mid-October showing him take the lead over both Trump and Clinton in the Beehive State. But after the FBI announced later in the month that it had reactivated its investigation into Clinton's private email server, the focus on Trump's shortcomings received less attention, and much of the enthusiasm for McMullin evaporated.

On the eve of Election Day, the independent presidential candidate was at 25% in the RealClearPolitics average, trailing Trump by roughly 10 points.

McMullin served in the CIA for a decade, and his colleagues from that time have attested to his work ethic, talent, and character (although some have also claimed that he exaggerated his status in the agency). After his time in the CIA, he worked as the chief policy director for Republicans in the House of Representatives.

He supports small government, respects capitalism, is pro-life, emphasizes the need for entitlement reform, and wants to repeal and replace Obamacare.

And, perhaps most importantly, he is perceived by voters as a man of integrity and good character.

In many ways, McMullin embodies the "real America" that Trump has been courting this whole election cycle. And to many disaffected Republican voters who cringe at Trump's playboy image and bullying rhetoric, McMullin represents a purer brand of conservatism.

"The Republican Party has really disappointed me," Barry Richardson, 36, said after McMullin's Brigham City town hall.

He explained why he was supporting the long-shot candidate: "I've been a lifelong Republican and I see it more as a statement of, 'Republicans, I'm not happy with you, I'm more happy with this guy who I can relate to than someone who I don't feel has been pushing the conservative movement for the time he says he has.'"

Trump, he said, doesn't represent the values that are important to him.

"[Trump] is a businessman like myself, [but] that's about the only thing I can relate to with him," Richardson, who owns a landscaping maintenance business, said. "He doesn't have the same family values, he doesn't have the same business values. ... Those are the things that I look for in a candidate."

All day Saturday, McMullin's campaign traveled the length of the state, stopping in parks, diners, and the St. George convention center to meet voters and deliver his message.

He spoke of returning power back to the states, respecting the Constitution, and "standing for what is right."

"It's nost just the country that's watching," McMullin said at a rally in St. George. "It's the world."

Trump has taken notice of the momentum McMullin has gained. In late October, Trump mocked McMullin for "going from coffee shop to coffee shop" courting voters. McMullin, at an event on Saturday, pointed out that Trump's jab was proof of how little he knows about the state - more than half of Utah's population is Mormon, and Mormons don't drink coffee.

Trump also noted that McMullin winning Utah could have a "devastating impact" on his electoral count. Because the race between Trump and Clinton is so close nationally, if McMullin robbed Trump of one reliably red state like Utah (which has just six electoral votes), it could create a deadlock in which neither Trump nor Clinton reach the requisite 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

If this scenario were to happen, the House of Representatives would then choose the next president - and McMullin would be in play.

This is the message McMullin and his running mate Mindy Finn brought to the campaign trail during the Saturday road trip. At each stop, he and Finn emphasized this strategy in an effort to convince voters that their vote wouldn't be wasted on them.

It might not be that difficult to convince voters this election cycle. McMullin was tied with Trump and Clinton in polls last month in Utah, and both of the major-party candidates are both astoundingly unpopular with voters, many of whom have become disillusioned.

In conversations with voters who showed up to McMullin's events on Friday and Saturday, one word came up more than any other in reference to Trump and Clinton - "corrupt."

"I just cannot vote for Hillary or Trump," Lynn Adair, a 63-year-old working in advertising sales, said after a meet and greet in Nephi. "They're just con artists. Vindictive and everything else."

When asked what she looks for in a candidate, she said, "honesty," "fairness," and "courage."

Many of the voters who spoke with Business Insider were lifelong Republicans who say they can't stomach voting for Trump.

"I'm in my late 50s, and this is the first year that I was seriously thinking of not voting," Gayle Crofts, 58, said after a meet and greet in Richfield. "I was sick about my choices. ... I felt like our country, 360 million people, and this was the best on either party we could do? This is really the best America has to offer?"

Crofts said she's officially leaving the Republican Party after this election.

"I want the rights back to the people, to us," she said. "We are America. And this is my America, and your America. So I think that I want honor and integrity back in the White House."

For about nearly a quarter of Utahns, McMullin represents that honor and integrity.

"There's a moral-ness about him, and I feel like Washington is just mired in corruption and it doesn't seem like anymore like we the people have much say," Shirley Case, 72, said after an event at a restauran in Ephraim. "It just feels like there is finally a breath of fresh air, that the people are going to be able to speak. And even though it doesn't make a difference, people are standing."

Another common refrain from voters was the idea that people are voting for Trump out of fear.

"People who are voting for Trump are voting for him because they're desperate and they're hopeful that he can change something," Jenni Ferree, Case's 34-year-old daughter, said. "I just feel like if we're having to vote for someone out of desperation, we're not in a good place."

Case herself displayed some of that desperation.

"My heart weeps for my country," she said. "I'm 72 years old and I don't think I have ever seen my country in this situation."

Aboard the "campaign bus" (an RV with no identifying markings), McMullin and Finn meditated on this idea.

"I think a lot of the voters who have gravitated toward Donald Trump have been overlooked," Finn said. "There are people who have experienced wage stagnation, they've seen their jobs go overseas or their industries transform by technology or be taken away by automation."

She continued: "So Donald Trump is giving a voice to those people. Unfortunately, what he's brought along with it, is divisive rhetoric and divisive policies that have divided this country."

McMullin echoed Finn's thoughts.

"People are just desperate," he said. "Really, truly desperate. Whether it's because of Obamacare or lack of economic opportunity or a feeling that they're not being listened to by the government. We hear these stories all day long."

On the campaign trail, McMullin often uses the phrase "the lesser of two evils" in reference to Clinton and Trump. He cites the multiple investigations Clinton has been under during her run for the presidency, but he focuses more on Trump's scandals and controversies - the Access Hollywood tape, the proposed ban on Muslims entering the US, his seemingly hostile stance toward immigrants.

McMullin has cast himself as the candidate who is standing against Trump on principle, using soaring rhetoric about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"Is it a long shot? Absolutely," McMullin said at the Nephi event in reference to his chance of winning the presidency. "But so was the founding of this country."

Kristlyn Peterson, an 18-year-old student at Snow College who is voting for the first time this year, has been looking for a hero.

"I was a little disappointed," she said about Trump and Clinton winning the major-party nominations. "I was like, where's my George Washington, Thomas Jefferson? Where are all these heroes that I can vote for?"

Guizella Rocabado, a 33-year-old professor at Southern Utah University, is also voting for the first time this year. She became a US citizen two years ago after moving here from her native Bolivia 15 years ago.

"I've been doing my research for a couple of years, and, you know, going through all the primaries and participating in the caucus, and then when the nominees ... were set in stone, I was just so sad," she said after a McMullin meet and greet in Cedar City. "Because for the first time, I thought, 'Well, it's my first time voting, but I think I'm going to have to vote blank,' and it's just sad to me."

Racabado balked when asked about Trump's rhetoric on immigration.

"It was kind of like a slap in the face for me," she said.

She clarified that while she doesn't support open borders, she thinks it should be easier for people like her to immigrate to the US.

"This is a country made from immigrants, but it's also a country of law," Rocabado said.

While McMullin's smaller events drew voters in small towns who were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about McMullin, the tone at his final event on Saturday was decidedly more sober.

The rally at the convention center in St. George, a city in southern Utah near the Arizona border, drew a crowd of nearly 300, a far cry from the 900 people who showed up to a similar event in a city half the size last month.

The chairs in the back half of the large room were roped off and left unfilled. A woman in a McMullin t-shirt passed out handmade signs with phrases like "Evan McMullin is a honest man."

Almost as soon as McMullin took the stage, a pro-Trump heckler interrupted him, shouting, "A vote for Evan is a vote for Hillary!"

As supporters attempted to drown out the heckler with chants of "Evan, Evan," McMullin urged them to let the man speak. He then noted that Republican Party leaders in Utah had encouraged Trump supporters to show up and "ask tough questions" of his campaign.

McMullin then launched into familiar rhetoric, asking why political leaders in this country won't stand up to Trump and Clinton.

"The time has come to stop relying passively on leaders that don't have the courage to stand up for us," he said.

At this, the heckler got up and walked out to thunderous applause.

The heckler is part of the pragmatic third of the Utah electorate that is supporting Trump - those who want to keep Clinton from the White House even if it means casting a vote for a candidate they aren't very enthusiastic about.

Marc Stallings, the political director for the Trump campaign in Utah, came out to McMullin's St. George event with a group of Trump supporters who stood outside with "Trump/Pence" signs.

"I'm the first to admit, even when we got to the national convention, I was still a bit undecided," Stallings said. "... I was kinda thinking in the back of my mind that Mitt [Romney] would come save the day."

Stallings said he supports Trump simply because he's the Republican nominee for president.

It's true that if Trump loses Utah to McMullin, it could throw the entire election for him. And in that case, some discouraged Utahns believe, they'll end up even worse off with Clinton than they would have been with Trump. So while some voters might feel comfortable casting a protest vote for a long-shot candidate like McMullin, others feel that they don't have the luxury to take a gamble with the next four years of their lives.

And that doesn't mean that voters are happy with the choices that have been laid out in front of them.

"I have 24 grandkids. This is about my grandkids," the heckler, who did not provide his name, said after he left the McMullin rally. "The man has no chance of winning, pure and simple. This is a pragmatic decision."

He is a Trump supporter, but only reluctantly.

"Trump wasn't my first, second, third, or fourth choice," he said. "But he's our only choice now if we want to save our country."

As McMullin heads into Election Day, it seems as though the sentiment of these Trump supporters might be enough to keep Utah red. Utahns may find McMullin more agreeable, but voting for Trump is a pill conservatives in the state would rather swallow if it prevents Clinton from capturing the White House.

"Don't waste your vote," Stallings said. "Help make America great again."